"Nonsense, my good man! Don't be foolish. She's gone elsewhere and the room is to let. If she hadn't sent me some one I would have charged her a week's rent; but now that she's got me a tenant she's at liberty to go where she likes. She knows I'd rather have men than women at any time of day."
"Oh, but if it's her room, and she's given it up for me—"
"It isn't her room; it's mine. I can let it to any one I please. She knows of a dozen places in the city that she'll like just as well as this, so don't think she'll be on the street. Come along; I've no time to waste."
"Better go," I whispered, taking him by the arm, so that the procession started.
The hall was papered in deep crimson, against which a monumental black-walnut hat-and-umbrella stand was visible chiefly because of the gleam of an inset mirror. The floors were painted in the darkest shade of brown, in keeping with the massive body of the staircase. Up the staircase, as along the hall, ran a strip of deep crimson carpet, exposing the warp on the edge of each step.
A hush of solemnity lay over everything. Clearly Miss Flowerdew's roomers were off for the day, and the place left to her and the little colored maid who had admitted us. Drinkwater and I made our way upward in a kind of awe, he clinging to my arm, frightened and yet adventurous.
The long, steep stairs curved toward the top to an upper hall darker than that below, because the one window was in ground glass with a border of red and blue. Deep crimson was again the dominating color, broken only by the doors which may have been mahogany. All doors were closed except the one nearest the top of the stairs, which stood ajar. Miss Flowerdew pushed it open, bidding us follow her.
We were on the spot which above all others in the world Lydia Blair called home. When the exquisite bit of jewel-weed drifted past me on the deck of the Auvergne this haven was in the background of her memory.
Through the gloom two iron beds, covered with coarse white counterpanes, sagged in the outlines of their mattresses, as beds do after a great many people have slept in them. A low wicker armchair sagged in the seat as armchairs do after a great many people have sat in them. A great many people had passed through this room, wearing it down, wearing it out; and yet there was a woman in the world whose soul leaped toward it as the hearth of her affections. Because it was architecturally dark a paper of olive-green arabesques on an olive-green background had been glued on the walls to make it darker still; and because it was now as dark as it could be made, the table, the chest of drawers, the washstand, like the doors, were all of the darkest brown. Miss Flowerdew pointed to their bare tops to say:
"Lydia has her own covers, and when she puts her photographs and knickknacks round it makes a home for her."